Yesterday, I made a drive to Modesto and hooked up with Randy, 1wildrt, to pick up a steering column he tracked down with one of his E-body sources. Today I pulled the Unisteer rack unit out. New Borgeson from BAC showed up yesterday along with the front sway bar. Drained the Hydraboost lines going from it to the radiator and main unit. After that I pulled the radiator out. Took it to Industrial Radiator in Santa Maria to get the leak in the tank taken care of. Doug down there clued me in on issues he's seen quite often on aluminum radiators that are constructed like the Be Cool unit I took out. This is of concern to me too as I have one of their units for my 65. Anyway, on the top and bottom of these crossflow units, they have a cap to protect the core and tie it all together at the tank/header area. The problem is that with the thermal expansion/contraction, the radiator can't expand. It needs expansion joints for the same reason you come across in concrete, block walls and other stuff. Since it's tied together and can't move freely, the upper and lower tubes[ first ones to have problems with this] end up bending, then leaking where bent. He shined his light on the bad areas in question and it was enlightening. So his unit can be patched, but no guarantee on how long it last. Gotta replace the unit. He put this in 5 years ago, paid $1k plus labor to install, and hasn't driven it much due to some of the issues he brought it to me for. Maybe has 500 miles on it? Tomorrow I'll see if I can put a brass/copper unit in and see what the cost will be for all the needed pieces. Radiator, shroud, hoses, fan, clutch etc. I took pictures of my new, unused unit so you all could see what I'm talking about. On the way back from seeing Doug, I tossed around different possibilities to eliminate this problem from happening to me down the road. I think what can work is to cut 2-3 vertical straps per side, weld them to the top and bottom plates to tie the plates and core together, then cut the plates away from the tanks which will enable the radiator to expand/contract without binding up and tweaking the core tubes. My finger is pointing where the plates are currently welded to my unit on the tank. Another thing I ran into which has no selection on the radiator company, is that a PO put green Loctite on the fan shroud mount bolts. WTF! Had to cut the nuts on two with the cutoff wheel.
